Throwing the Elephant

By: Stanley Bing

Narrated by: Simon Jones, Philip Bosco

Stanley Bing follows his enormously successful What Would Machiavelli Do? with another subversively humorous exploration of how work would be different—if the Buddha were your personal consultant.

What would the Buddha do—if he had to deal with a rampaging elephant of a boss every day? That is the premise of Stanley Bing’s wickedly funny guide to finding inner peace in the face of relentlessly obnoxious, huge, and sometimes smelly bosses. Taking the concept of managing up to a new cosmic plateau, Bing urges no less than a revolution of the spirit in the American workplace, turning overwrought, oppressed, stressed-out employees into models of Zen-like powers of concentration, able to take their elephant-like bosses and grey, lumbering companies and twirl them around the little finger of their consciousness.

In Bing’s unique tradition of social criticism cum business self-help, Throwing the Elephant presents Four Truths (or possibly Five), a Ninefold Path, and one useful, hilarious guide to workplace sanity, success, and enlightenment that surpasses all understanding, survival.

©2002 Stanley Bing; (P)2002 HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc.

A bit out of date

Entertaining but not very useful. There are a couple tidbits but find a summary and skip the whole book.

An interesting take on an old topic

Not a ton of new ideas here, but a refreshing way to deliver age old wisdom on how you should be handling the relationship with your boss. I laughed out loud a couple times on the delivery.

Loved it!

I have listend to this book several times (rented from the library) and liked it enough to buy it. I think the reader is humorous and the content is very good, if you listen to what he is saying. The Zen attitude for corporate culture was refreshing and helpful. I would recommend this book to anyone (working for an elephant) who wants to learn how to accept the Zen way of thinking and apply it in the business world and help yourself have a better attitude about life.

original

Updated Zen business philosophy. Original content. Great voice actor. I hate homework so instead of writing a twenty word review, I'll just press the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ symbolizing that time is money.

I was not expecting this book to be hilarious

What made the experience of listening to Throwing the Elephant the most enjoyable?

The accent of the narrator makes this book so much more clever because it conjures images of watching a Nature channel with wise hints of Obi Wan. Brilliant.

What other book might you compare Throwing the Elephant to and why?

Having read/listened to stacks of business books, I was anticipating a business book to give me tips on getting ahead or whatever, and instead I'm getting zen lessons in throwing an elephant. Nothing like it. This book is remarkably clever. Things that used to annoy me about the elephant now just make me smile.